Benchmarking advertising performance by category

Every marketer has looked at ad results and wondered what they really mean. Was that lift strong? Was it typical? Was it a sign of something bigger working? Because every impression tells a story, reporting on ad campaign results calls for more than surface-level insights. DISQO’s advertising benchmarks help give that story context, answering some of the most pressing questions marketers face.

How does this performance compare to what’s typical in the market?

What does “good” really look like for a brand like mine?

Are we pacing with the category or falling behind?

Are we focused on the right KPIs for how people buy in our category?

Which channels play the biggest role in shaping that decision?

Benchmarks help answer these questions. They show where performance stands within broader market patterns and reveal what strong results look like across different categories, including channels such as social media and CTV. Because every industry moves differently and those nuances matter, marketers need to know when a single percentage point signals major progress in one category and modest gains in another.

DISQO’s 2H 2025 Advertising Effectiveness Benchmarks, soon to be released, capture those differences. Drawing on results from more than 1,700 campaigns and seventeen lift metrics, they reveal how advertising performs across categories, channels, and stages of brand maturity. When key performance indicators are carefully analyzed, they reflect how brands move people from recognition to preference to purchase, and what strong performance looks like along that journey.

This guide explores those patterns across four industries: Consumables, Goods, Services, and Vehicles. Each tells a slightly different story about how advertising drives progress. Together, they show how benchmarks can do more than measure performance. They help marketers understand it, anticipate it, and make it better.

Industry benchmarks for Consumables

In categories where purchases happen often and decisions are made in seconds, advertising has to work fast. Consumables, like food, beverages, and personal care products, rely on familiarity and positive sentiment more than detailed persuasion. The goal is to stay visible and trusted at the moment of choice.

DISQO’s benchmarks show how this plays out in the data. Consumables outperform other categories in driving recognition and persuasion, showing strong lift in top- and mid-funnel metrics:

Ad Awareness: +0.93 points

Favorability: +3.05 points

Purchase Intent: +2.44 points

This confirms that media exposure drives meaningful shifts in perception, even when consumers are not consciously weighing options. Campaigns that keep brands present across high-reach environments like video and social sustain top-of-mind awareness and reinforce preference over time.

Because consumable purchases also happen in physical stores, lower digital outcome metrics are expected. Online behaviors such as site visitation or e-commerce activity tend to serve as signals of interest rather than conversions. What matters most is that the advertising builds salience, ensuring that when consumers reach the shelf, they instinctively reach for the brand they remember.

For marketers, industry benchmarking in this category is like a pulse check on influence. They reveal whether creative and media strategies are maintaining attention, reinforcing trust, and keeping the brand in the mental rotation of everyday decisions. In low-consideration environments, progress is not about a single transaction but about earning repeated moments of choice.

Industry benchmarks for Goods

For products that cost more, last longer, or require research before purchase, advertising plays a more direct and deliberate role. Goods such as apparel, electronics, furniture, and home improvement items depend on storytelling that builds confidence and distinction. These are categories where consumers pause, compare, and evaluate before acting.

DISQO benchmarks show how this process takes shape in the data. Campaigns for goods deliver strong results across awareness and digital engagement, demonstrating that advertising drives not only recognition but also active exploration.

Unaided Awareness: +0.51 points

Category Site Visitation: +0.96 points

Category E-commerce Activity: +2.05 points

Competitive Search: +0.64 points

These ad results suggest that consumers in this category move naturally from exposure to research. They are looking for confirmation, comparing prices, reading reviews, or returning to a brand they already recognize. Advertising initiates that process by reinforcing value, quality, and relevance.

What matters most for goods is the ability to communicate meaningfully and consistently. Awareness on its own is not enough. Consumers must understand what makes one product the right choice. Benchmarks across mid- and lower-funnel metrics reveal how effectively advertising turns recognition into preference and preference into intent.

For marketers, these campaign performance metrics and benchmark data define what strong performance looks like in a high-consideration space. A successful campaign creates curiosity and momentum. It encourages consumers to search, to explore, and to weigh their options. Once they begin that process, the brand already has their attention, and the path to conversion has begun.

Industry benchmarks for Services

Services are built on confidence. Whether in finance, insurance, entertainment, or technology, people choose providers they understand and believe in. Effective advertising for these brands is not only about visibility but about credibility. It must reassure as much as it persuades.

DISQO benchmarks reveal that services’ advertising performance spikes in areas that reflect clarity and trust. Campaigns often excel in mid-funnel metrics that measure how well messages connect and how consistently they are remembered.

Message Association: +1.03 points

Familiarity: +2.73 points

Category Search: +0.89 points

Competitive Site Visitation: +1.21 points

These findings highlight a common dynamic. Services tend to have lower aided awareness but high engagement among consumers who already know them. That means advertising is resonating where it matters most, reinforcing relationships and giving audiences a reason to choose one provider over another.

For marketers, these benchmarks help identify where growth potential lies. Visibility can be expanded, but trust is the lever that moves people closer to action. When measured together, awareness, familiarity, and association provide a clear picture of how effectively a campaign strengthens both presence and credibility.

In the services category, lift is more than a measure of reach. It reflects understanding. The more audiences recognize a brand’s promise and believe it will deliver, the stronger the impact across every stage of the funnel.

Industry benchmarks for Vehicles

Few categories test the endurance of advertising quite like automotive. Purchase timelines are long, decisions are complex, and competition for attention is constant. For these brands, success depends on consistency. The goal is not just to inspire interest but to sustain it over months of research, comparison, and deliberation.

DISQO benchmarks reflect that challenge. Automotive and vehicle-related campaigns tend to see smaller lifts in awareness but maintain strong performance across favorability and intent. Once noticed, these campaigns resonate deeply.

Favorability: +2.42 points

Purchase Intent: +2.19 points

Category Site Visitation: +0.80 points

Category Search: +0.27 points

These results show that while vehicles may lag in top-of-funnel visibility, they hold their ground once audiences engage. Consumers who see automotive advertising are more likely to explore, compare, and remember the brand when it is time to buy. Each exposure adds to a cumulative effect that builds familiarity and trust over time.

For marketers, benchmarks in this category emphasize the value of persistence. Automotive decisions are rarely impulsive. The right message, delivered consistently, reinforces brand equity and keeps the brand active in the consumer’s consideration set. Over time, that steady presence becomes its own competitive advantage.

In this category, lift is rarely immediate, but it compounds. The data tells a clear story: awareness builds slowly, favorability endures, and purchase intent grows stronger with careful repetition. Momentum, not immediacy, is the measure of success.

Ready to compare your advertising performance?

Advertising benchmarks do more than measure campaign performance. They give marketers a continuous and grounded view of how campaigns work across markets and audiences. The patterns they reveal help shape better questions, better decisions, and ultimately, better results.

To see the full scope of industry benchmark insights, stay tuned for DISQO’s 2H 2025 Advertising Effectiveness Benchmarks Report, which outlines performance across seventeen metrics from more than 1,700 campaigns.

A marketer’s guide to analyzing ad results and campaign performance

Ad effectiveness results are not universal. Every campaign lives within its own set of conditions—brand maturity, category dynamics, and the complexity of the consumer’s decision-making process. What works for a startup seeking its first spark of awareness will rarely mirror what drives growth for an established brand defending market share. Yet too often, the same advertising performance signals are applied to both, as if awareness, favorability, and purchase intent move at the same pace across every brand and every buyer.

When this happens, campaign analysis loses meaning. Results blur together, success becomes ambiguous, and optimization turns reactive instead of strategic. For this reason, advertising effectiveness depends on where a brand stands in its journey and how people make choices in its category. Without that context, even the strongest creative and smartest media plans risk being judged by the wrong standards. In the following, we’ll address those differences and the importance of advertising benchmarks that provide marketers with the insights needed to truly understand ad results in context.

How context shapes advertising success

Advertising performance doesn’t exist in isolation. Below the surface, every result is a reflection of intersecting realities: the stage of the brand and the buyer’s mindset. Together, they determine what a campaign should achieve, how that achievement is measured, and what success truly means.

Brand type or maturity defines a brand’s starting point in the consumer’s mind, typically categorized as Aided Awareness (33% and below). A new brand must fight for basic recognition, working to shift awareness from zero to something. An established brand (Aided awareness at 66% and above), on the other hand, competes in a different arena. Its challenge isn’t visibility but vitality. It must deepen connection, maintain relevance, and prevent erosion of trust. Here, the same metric can represent two entirely different outcomes depending on where the brand begins.

Purchase consideration introduces a second layer of complexity. Buying a snack and buying a car demand different kinds of attention, emotion, and time. One is impulsive, the other deliberate. For fast-moving categories, advertising must capture attention quickly and influence decisions at the moment of choice. For high-consideration products, success unfolds more slowly as familiarity builds, perceptions shift, and confidence takes shape over multiple interactions.

When these two forces—brand maturity and purchase consideration—work together, they create the framework for a better approach to advertising performance and analysis. Without understanding how they interact, marketers risk chasing metrics that fail to explain what’s actually happening. With this mindset, context turns raw numbers and advertising data into insight, transforming measurement from a post-campaign report into a true reflection of how advertising works.

Brand maturity: Why the starting point determines strategy

Every brand carries its own momentum. Some are climbing, some are maintaining altitude, and others are defending against decline. Measurement only makes sense when it accounts for that motion. Without acknowledging where a brand begins, numbers lose their meaning.

New brands face the most challenging climb. They are working against anonymity, trying to plant a seed of recognition in crowded markets. A small lift in awareness may look modest on paper, but in context, it can signal a breakthrough—a sign that the brand has entered the conversation and begun shaping perception. Early success is fragile, built on repetition, discovery, and relevance. For these brands, progress is measured in recognition, not conversion.

As a brand matures, its focus shifts. Emerging brands (Aided awareness between 34-66%) move from simply being noticed to being chosen. They start to compete on meaning—on what they stand for, who they speak to, and how they differentiate from others in their category. Here, intent becomes the critical signal. A rise in purchase consideration or favorability carries more weight than pure awareness because it shows that the brand has earned relevance.

Established brands operate under a different kind of pressure. They already command awareness, but familiarity can dull excitement. The challenge is not reach—it’s renewal. Measuring lift for these brands requires attention to nuance: subtle shifts in perception, sustained favorability, and resonance with new audiences. Even small movements in these metrics can represent significant long-term value.

The thread across all stages is momentum. Growth, relevance, and equity must be evaluated relative to where a brand stands. Reporting on ad campaign results that ignore maturity mistakes movement for stagnation, and progress for failure. True insight begins when the numbers are read through the lens of evolution.

Purchase consideration: Fast choices vs. slow decisions

Not every purchase carries the same weight. Some happen in seconds, guided by impulse or habit. Others unfold over weeks, shaped by research, emotion, and trust. Understanding the tempo of decision-making is essential to understanding what advertising must accomplish.

Low consideration categories, such as snacks, beverages, beauty, and quick-service restaurants, live in moments. They depend on presence and memory. The buyer is not weighing options with great care; they are reacting to cues, availability, and familiarity. For these brands, advertising must strike fast. It has to capture attention, build recognition, and trigger action at the point of choice. Measurement here should focus on near-term lift in awareness, recall, and intent.

High consideration categories such as automotive, financial services, insurance, and travel play a longer game. These decisions involve comparison, research, and confidence. Advertising in these spaces must do more than be seen; it must be trusted. Each exposure contributes to a gradual shift in perception. Familiarity, message association, and consideration become the leading indicators of eventual purchase. Here, patience is the metric.

The difference between these two dynamics changes how campaigns should be evaluated. Measuring marketing results both by the same standards flattens their meaning. A short-term spike may define victory for one and irrelevance for another. The most accurate frameworks consider not just what the consumer did, but how long it took them to decide.

With DISQO, marketers can see both realities at once. By pairing attitudinal shifts with observable behaviors such as search, site visits, or ecommerce activity, advertisers can connect what people feel with what they do. This connection turns consideration from a vague middle ground into a visible stage of influence. It transforms measurement from snapshots into stories, revealing not only that advertising works, but how it works.

The solution and the stakes of getting it wrong

Advertising succeeds when it’s measured in context. The right framework begins with two simple but powerful questions: where is the brand in its journey, and how do people make decisions in its category? When these questions guide measurement, results stop being abstract. They become meaningful signals of progress and proof of impact.

The most effective measurement frameworks align these two dimensions. They define which metrics to prioritize, which benchmarks matter, and how to interpret change. When measurement loses this balance, the consequences ripple across the business. Brands can misread momentum, shift budgets away from what works, or double down on tactics that yield only surface-level results.

A new entrant might chase sales before building awareness, burning through spend on audiences who do not yet know who they are. A mature brand might overvalue short-term clicks and underinvest in the equity that sustains long-term growth. Even strong creative and smart media planning cannot overcome a measurement system that asks the wrong questions.

The path forward

The path forward is not more data, but better interpretation. When advertisers connect measurement to brand maturity and purchase dynamics, they see the story behind the numbers. They understand not just that their campaign performed, but why it performed. That clarity turns advertising performance reporting into strategy. It gives marketers the confidence to plan the next move with purpose, not assumption.

To explore how leading marketers are transforming their approach, download DISQO’s Ad Effectiveness Results Are Not Universal with the brand maturity and purchase dynamic data to help you measure what matters most.

Learn more about how brands that tailor their measurement frameworks to both maturity and purchase consideration are far better positioned to prove advertising’s real value.

We improve what we measure. That’s true in business, science, sports, and advertising. Measurement doesn’t just keep score; it defines the game. What we measure shapes what we value. And what we value sets the course for action.

But here’s the paradox: the most valuable and proven driver of growth in advertising — brand — is the one we measure the least.

Yet, it’s why people pay more for one bottle of water than another when both are clear, cold, and sitting side by side on the shelf. It’s the same reason brands invest millions of dollars and months of preparation into a single Super Bowl commercial. Marketers make that commitment because they know the cultural impact, loyalty, and long-term impact it creates for the brand.

Advertising, or the sum of every touchpoint, campaign, message, and signal across every channel over time, is what keeps score. It’s what makes brand choice instinctive rather than rational. And it has proven again and again, when understood, to be the most durable path to sustainable growth.

So while it’s no secret that marketers excel at measuring performance and do it often, the question is: why does measuring brand, the true engine of growth, still sit in the back seat?

Historically, it has been hard to measure, slow, and expensive. It was left off the same dashboards as performance and replaced by site visits, downloads, and signups. This made it difficult to see the very results building demand for tomorrow.

What is the brand movement?

The Brand Movement is a call to make brand the most measured signal in advertising. By scaling brand measurement across every dollar spent, marketers can see how brand and performance work in tandem to unlock the strongest ROI.

Equally, we need to, as an industry, reframe how we think about brand and performance media itself. A coupon or discount campaign at a retailer like Bed Bath & Beyond is often classified as pure performance, judged only on redemptions or sales. However, the reality is that these campaigns also shape how people feel about the brand. A shopper who redeems that coupon isn’t just lowering their basket price; their perception of the brand is being formed. This brand impact has always been there, hidden in plain sight, but until they become measured, they will not be understood.

The future of advertising depends on recognizing this dual impact. Performance campaigns drive immediate action, but they can also build brand or erode brand equity along the way. Brand campaigns create tomorrow’s buyers, while performance campaigns can and should reinforce brand meaning in the moment.

The urgency is sharper in the AI era. Automation is reshaping targeting, bidding, creative, and optimization, rewriting consumer journeys while making signals harder to track. Attribution is stacking models on top of models. In this shifting environment, brand is the anchor, the constant that guides decisions even when clicks fade.

The ripple effect of confidence and growth

When brand measurement becomes universal, confidence grows across the ecosystem. That confidence fuels reinvestment: brands scale campaigns with measurable proof, agencies stretch budgets further through sharper optimization, and media companies capture stronger commitments by demonstrating value with every dollar spent.

The result is an economic flywheel, with more effective campaigns, stronger outcomes, greater investment, and industry-wide growth.

The Brand Movement goes beyond measurement. It fills a critical gap in the marketer’s toolkit by showing how advertising drives the most important engine of growth: brand.

Once unlocked, it empowers marketers to propel their companies forward, ensuring every dollar builds lasting value and advertising becomes stronger, smarter, and more ambitious.